Containers, such as bottles, come in many sizes and shapes. As a practical matter, any machine that handles these containers would have to be configured to accommodate these sizes and shapes.
Most container-processing machines and transport lines have “format parts” that act as interfaces customized to the specific container. To reconfigure a machine for a different container, one simply exchanges the format parts, while leaving the rest of the machine alone.
Although the use of interchangeable format parts simplifies matters a great deal, any container-processing machine will have a great many of these format parts. The sheer number of such format parts to be exchanged makes reconfiguration a daunting task with significant machine downtime.